5th Sorrowful Mystery: The Crucifixion

Hello! So I know I've been super absent from this blog for a really long time, but I decided to post today and realized I never finished my meditations on the Sorrowful Mysteries. So here is my meditation on the Crucifixion:

From The Passion of Christ

So often I forget the full gruesomeness of the Crucifixion. Most crucifixes hanging in churches or homes look more the picture below than the scene above.

 On these crucifixes, Jesus looks like he's just chilling on the cross. His face doesn't typically look full of anguish. He's not covered in blood. And regardless of whether it's a crucifix or a scene in the movie, we depict Jesus wearing some type of garment on the cross.

I'm not saying that every crucifix should be bloody or that we should have naked figures of Jesus hanging in our homes and churches, but I think it's useful to at least occasionally confront ourselves with the truth of the Crucifixion.

It was bloody and gruesome. Jesus hung naked and bloody and bruised on the cross, his body contorting as he struggled to breathe. Because He is human as well as divine, and His human physiology would have continued to struggle to survive even if He had given up on breathing. People jeered at Him. We jeered at Him. We nailed God to a cross and laughed as He struggled for air.

On our part, it is the worst crime in the history of the universe.

And on His part, it is the greatest act of love in the history of the universe.

I've always marveled at the fact that Christ basically used our sin in order to redeem us. He didn't come down to Earth and say, "Look, now I've humbled myself and I'm going to kill myself as a sacrifice for all of you." Instead, He allowed us to kill Him. He came down to Earth determined to let us do exactly what He knew we would do - brutally murder Him. And He used that to grant us redemption.

Sometimes, I feel tricked. We sin, we nail God to a tree. We've killed God. But the problem (or rather, the opposite of a problem) is that God dying broke death. Death could never hold Him. And by sacrificing Himself willingly, He breaks sin's power over us.

Trying to think about this too much makes my head hurt. He used our sins, accepted our brutal murder of Him, and in so doing, destroyed the power of sin, broke death, and offered us redemption.

But I love the image of death reaching out to swallow up God, death rejoicing in a feast so great, and then death shattering from the weight of devouring infinite life.

Infinite love becomes sin, and sin breaks.

Infinite life dies, and death breaks.

If you have any thoughts on this, let me know.

I'm praying for you!

:)